Head-to-head
Contabo vs Hetzner Cloud
Two hosts, side by side. Pricing, features, and the trade-offs that actually matter.
Contabo from $5/mo
Stupid amounts of RAM and disk for the price, with the ergonomics to match.
HQ DE · founded 2003
Hetzner Cloud from $4.5/mo
European VPS with the best price/performance ratio, period.
HQ DE · founded 1997
Quick verdict
Cheapest: Hetzner Cloud wins on entry price ($4.5/mo vs $5/mo).
More features: Hetzner Cloud ships more first-party platform features out of the box.
Region: Contabo is HQ'd in DE; Hetzner Cloud in DE.
Cheapest plans, side by side
| Contabo | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | VPS S | CX22 |
| Price | $5/mo | $4.5/mo |
| CPU | 4 vCPU | 2 vCPU (Intel) |
| RAM | 8 GB | 4 GB |
| Disk | 50 GB | 40 GB |
| Bandwidth | 32 TB | 20 TB |
Feature parity
| Contabo | Hetzner Cloud | |
|---|---|---|
| Managed Postgres | × | × |
| Managed Redis | × | × |
| Object storage | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-click apps | ✓ | ✓ |
| Private network | × | ✓ |
| IPv6 | ✓ | ✓ |
| DDoS protection | ✓ | ✓ |
| Snapshots | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Terraform | × | ✓ |
Contabo pros
- +8 GB RAM + 200 GB SSD for under $10/mo, no commitment
- +Generous resources let you self-host stacks that need RAM (Mastodon, Synapse, Sentry)
- +EU and US regions, transparent monthly billing
Contabo cons
- −Provisioning can take hours instead of seconds
- −Network performance is the most-cited complaint — fine for a personal app, marginal for a SaaS with real users
- −Setup fee on entry-level plans (waived on annual commits)
Hetzner Cloud pros
- +Cheapest credible VPS in the market — €4.51/mo for 2 vCPU + 4 GB RAM
- +AMD EPYC and Intel Sapphire Rapids in newer generations
- +20 TB of bandwidth included on entry-level plans
Hetzner Cloud cons
- −Account verification can take days for non-EU signups
- −No managed Postgres or Redis — you run them yourself
- −No US-east region (closest is Hillsboro, OR or Ashburn, VA)